Today the US Copyright Royalty Board is going to decide if they agree to increase music royalty payments as requested by the National Music Publishers Association, and for some reason the British are panicking over the idea that the Apple iTunes Music Store will shut down because of this. The reason for their hysteria is a Board at the Library of Congress deposition by iTunes vice president Eddy Cue in 2007:

If (iTunes) was forced to absorb any increase in the... royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all. Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [iTunes] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.

As a result of this, the limey yellow press and the BBC are talking about music apocalypse today, Nostradamus style, as if they were one of those crazy potheads who keep writing to us about how the Large Hadron Collider is going to assplode and take the reality fabric with it.

Well, here's a note to all those who are trying to spin this for their own benefit, saying that Apple is "holding its customers to ransom by threatening to shut down its iTunes music download site": Not only there's no ransom because Apple's protected material keeps working even while the store is not but, quite simple, it's just not going to happen.